Hello everybody and welcome back to Rounding the News.
My name is Liam Sturgis and I'm your host for this weekly news roundup brought to you
by Rounding the Earth.
Now today's going to be very interesting.
I've already been running into what are becoming very familiar and characteristic tech issues
and I'm hoping my computer will make it through today.
But it's not just my computer.
Substack is playing some very interesting games with my drafts.
As you may know I write out essentially my scripts for the show into Substack which then
become the show notes and this is the second time that an earlier version of my draft gets
swapped in and then I lose part of what I wrote later.
In any case I think I was able to get most of it ready to go for you guys.
So we're going to have an excellent show today.
Now the second thing is this week was just packed with stuff.
I was involved in an investigation into something that was going to potentially be the subject
of today's show but I decided against it.
It'll come up in a future discussion probably.
The main reason I didn't bring it up this time is it wasn't tied to a specific news
item.
But in any case I've had a very busy week and some potentially very exciting things
in development.
But we're going to cover a couple of really interesting things.
Today's show is titled The Fixer.
Now I'm just going to very quickly go through make sure that I am live on all of our various
platforms.
Looks like we're live on Rumble and Locals and Rockfin.
So that is fantastic.
Hello Jen in the chat.
All right so The Fixer.
Now you'll find I think what I found which is there's sort of a through line that naturally
emerges through our stories for today.
We'll see where this name comes from in a little bit.
Now first of all just remember if you're watching on Rumble you can leave us a Rumble rant which
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This past week I had a very busy Wednesday and so did Matthew.
He led a discussion on the topic of is there a real Steve Kirsch.
I'll say nothing more on the topic.
I'll recommend that if you haven't yet become a supporter go do so and watch this past week's
supporters exclusive video.
All right so let's dive right in here.
Today we have our first story is is an interesting one.
Tiffany Dover.
Now this is a name that I've heard many times over the last couple of years and I wasn't
really paying attention at the time that this situation first occurred but there's been
some developments.
Now after over two years of silence a Tennessee nurse named Tiffany Dover appears to have
stepped back into the public eye.
But instead of settling debate about her story which will explain her reappearance seems
to have only muddied the water further.
So here's what happened.
Dover was one of the first people to receive a COVID-19 genetic vaccine on live TV way
back on December 17th 2020.
Now we're going to pull up the incident here and watch it together just so we understand
what exactly we're talking about here.
I did yes.
So you know all of my staff we are excited to get the vaccine.
We are in the covered unit so therefore you know my team will be getting first chances
to get the vaccine and I know that it's really.
I'm sorry.
So as you can see she she she passes out and I learned a little bit of the story that I
wasn't yet familiar with.
So here but here's what happened as reported by USA Today six days after the incident.
We have this here.
Fact check.
Nurse who fainted after COVID-19 vaccine has an underlying health condition.
Last week Tiffany Dover a nurse manager from Catholic Health Initiatives Memorial Hospital
in Chattanooga Tennessee fainted shortly after she received the COVID-19 vaccine shot.
She was midway through a television interview when she passed out clips of the moment spread
across the internet.
Some accompanied by claims that the reaction is proof the vaccine isn't safe.
In reality Dover has an underlying health condition that causes her to faint when she
experiences pain per USA Today.
So here's the part I hadn't seen before.
After waking up Dover sat down for a debrief with reporters.
She explained that she had an underlying medical condition that predisposed her to fainting
episodes.
Now I'm hoping this clip will load because I have it for us.
All right well we'll see if that loads.
In the meantime I will go ahead and move on.
So as explained by Jordan Schachel in The Dossier.
After she was brought back to consciousness a clearly shaken Dover told the media that
she regularly has an overactive vagal response.
That's I believe a nerve.
Half a dozen fainting spells she said recently and added that that was why she collapsed
onto the ground after taking the shot.
Man I'd really like to watch this video if we can.
Anyway in the video she basically explains that.
Then Dover disappeared from the public eye.
Any suggestion that the experimental Pfizer BioNTech product she had received moments
before could have caused the incident were waved off and attacked his conspiracy theories
such as this article here.
What scheme was used to virally spread false information about the death of an American
nurse.
But even so objections to this explanation came almost immediately continuing from Schachel's
article.
I quote the incident sparked endless speculation on social media with many entertaining the
possibility that Tiffany Dover was severely injured by the vaccine or even killed on the
spot.
This fast became a nightmare PR situation for both the medical center and the vaccine
rollout campaign.
On December 21st 2020 four days after she got the shot CHI Memorial continued its damage
control operation by featuring Tiffany in a short video surrounded by her colleagues.
Nurse leadership supports Tiffany read one sign.
We got the shot says another for reasons unknown.
That video has been wiped from social media and the official accounts that posted it have
since taken it down.
So I recommend diving into Jordan's article which will be in the show notes which will
be posted on roundingtheearth.local.com.
If you want to get the rest of the story as has led up to now.
And so what's happened now is there's been a new NBC News exclusive that's comes that's
come out apparently with Tiffany and at first glance I look at her and I don't think it
looks like the same person but it's been two and a half years she's changed her hair color
and remember in the first video she had a mascot.
So I'm no expert in whether or not this is that person and so we will set aside the theories
that the woman on screen is not in fact over.
But even so it remains suspicious that she was absent from the public eye for so long
and so it's not at all surprising that so many people became convinced she was either
dead or incapacitated with people still really insisting that that was the case to this day.
Now Viva Fry summarized on Twitter Dover explains during the NBC interview that she initially
wanted to speak out again to continue public discussion on what happened to her but she
was told that that absolutely would not happen because it would cause quote irrecoverable
damages.
Inevitable damages to who exactly to Dover to CHI Memorial Hospital or to Pfizer and
BioNTech or the United States government bankrolling the massive vaccine rollout.
So for further analysis and informed commentary on Dover's interview and the questions that
remain unanswered I recommend watching Viva's clip from his recent live stream on the topic.
Once again this will be in the show notes and Viva has also gone through a I believe
it's a five part podcast series that precedes this particular interview where they attempted
to dissuade these rumors but Tiffany didn't really make an appearance there.
In any case Viva is very informed and a good commentary to listen to on the topic.
So I wish Tiffany Dover the best and I hope it's true that she was not meaningfully harmed
as many speculate.
Okay moving on to another very interesting topic as far as I'm concerned report Blaine's
paper size for Maricopa County 2022 election machine failures.
So we've covered the 2022 general election or the midterms where Carrie Lake looks like
she was going to win the governorship and then on election day there was a large proportion
of polling sites that ran into extreme difficulties tabulating ballots and it wound up disenfranchising
a bunch of voters depending on who you ask.
In any case on Monday this week April 10th a report was released by the Maricopa County
board of directors summarizing an investigation into widespread ballot problems during the
2022 general election in Maricopa County Arizona.
Led by former Arizona Supreme Court Justice Ruth McGregor the report concluded that equipment
failure was to blame rejecting the notion that human error or malicious intent were
at play.
Now I took the time to read the 30-some page report and I recommend you do so as well even
if just for interest on how these kind of things are done.
So there are a couple points I want to highlight.
So there were two different printers looked at and there's some comments being made about
well hold on a second these really are kind of consumer level printers and it's odd that
government use you know governments were using these for elections but regardless.
The first thing is to understand and this is sort of the point of rounding the news
right.
We're rounding out the perspectives we're not just taking one side of the argument over
the other and therefore when we hear or when we examine a news story we want to take the
source and sort of round out what are the potential biases what are the influences on
this story that may result in just a one-sided story.
So the sources of information for this investigation which is being described as independent were
the documents the manuals the guidebooks for the election workers on the day which is good
and also interviews with the people who administered the election and interviews with the Maricopa
County officials themselves.
As you can see although the focus of this investigation is narrowly centered on the
performance of the ballot on demand or BOD printers in the 2022 general election understanding
all the factors that could have affected their performance required that we have a broad
understanding of election procedures to learn about the procedures followed in preparing
and testing the BOD printers.
We spoke on multiple occasions with Scott Jarrett co-director of elections for Maricopa
County.
We conducted in-person interviews with employees in charge of IT for the MCED Maricopa County
electoral director maybe and the recorder's office the department's vote center manager
and head of the Election Day Command Center tabulation manager tabulation analyst lead
help desk supervisor and the personnel in charge of printer preparation and testing.
In other words all people who some are accusing of being the problem.
Moving on I just want to point out that Carrie Lake dismissed the report blaming ballot paper
used and basically we'll get to the specifics there but Carrie Lake wasn't impressed by
the report dismissing it as a farce.
These people don't think your vote or your opinion matters and anyone who takes the results
of this investigation seriously is part of the problem and her point was Maricopa County
released the results of their internal investigation and has shockingly found themselves not guilty
of any crime.
That's sort of the point I'm making about what sourcing was done for this report.
Now this is what they found so the first variable considered was the weight of the ballot paper
prior to 2020 Maricopa County's ballots were printed on 110 pound paper in 2020 Maricopa
County purchased a new type of on-site tabulator that could use either 80 pound or 100 or 100
pound paper.
So far so good.
Now here's something interesting that my partner Sam pointed out.
As a result of pandemic induced supply issues only 80 pound paper could be obtained in sufficient
quantities for the March 17 2020 presidential primary election.
Now hold the phone.
March 17 2020 and they're blaming pandemic induced supply issues.
The pandemic was officially declared by the WHO on March 11 2020.
I know here in Canada it was about a week later that we had British Columbia for example
the province that I live in declare their own public health emergency.
I'm not sure when this happened in Arizona but if you're preparing for a March 17 election
presumably in the weeks or months beforehand you would have ordered the paper and the supply
chain issues wouldn't have started by March 17 2020 meaning what I mean is in the lead
up to that period where they would have been purchasing the paper.
How could there have been supply chain issues?
I'm sure there is an answer to that question but I found that after Sam pointed it out
very interesting.
Okay here's the thing that I noticed the PPE presidential primary election which involved
a single race and a one-sided ballot experienced no issues with the ballot on demand papers.
During the 2020 general election however so this is now the one later on in the year on
some ballots the ink from the Sharpie pens provided at the vote centers bled through
the paper because voting bubbles are offset on the front.
Before I get there there's a footnote footnote 19 Maricopa County preferred that voters
use these pens referring to the Sharpies because the ink dries quickly as opposed to ballpoint
ink which takes more time to dry and thus can transfer onto the tabulator and cause
the tabulator to reject ballots because it reads the transferred ink and detects it as
a fault.
Now I realize this has already been litigated in the court of public opinion but this is
the first time I've heard this argument myself that Sharpies you know the thick inky bleedy
large pens are the ones that dry quicker and don't transfer compared to your standard ballpoint
pen.
This is another logical issue that I have with with this report I don't quite on its
face it doesn't pass the smell test.
Continuing on because voting bubbles are offset on the front and back of ballots any bleed
through cannot actually affect the correct tabulation of votes and all votes can be counted
even if bleed through occurs.
So there's there's a couple different things there that's that sort of contradict each
other but I went back and looked what was this this Sharpie gate situation and it it
it looks as though the point they're making is it does bleed through and it doesn't matter
if it does because they can be hand counted they can be taken in a method that's in addition
to the standard voting procedure and reduplicated like duplicated into a new ballot that doesn't
have the bleed through and that is where some of the issues lie when as we've discussed
in previous shows as Kerry Lake's election lawsuit is is substantial or is is alleging
it is in fact the chain of custody of those ballots that are being counted separately
from the main process where the concern lies.
So you almost see a bit of a cleanup job here a bit of a fixing of the narrative a bit of
a pointing away.
Now I went to look at what happened at the time what happens if ink bleeds through a
ballot in Arizona according to the state's elections procedures manual if a felt tip
pen mark does bleed through the ballot will likely get sent for duplication as I said
an election worker will fill out a new ballot using the voters choices that will be read
properly by tabulation machines.
There you go so that's what happened.
I found it very interesting I recommend reading through it as well because it gets you thinking
about what does constitute election security how does the the minute details like what
pen you use or the thickness of the paper or the length of the paper which wound up
being what they blame for this entire thing.
How does that affect the outcome of our democratically held elections.
Okay now moving on.
I have just one question about this story and then I'm going to move on.
Here's here's the headline Pentagon leaks how the FBI tracked down and arrested Jack
Texera 21 year old suspect in US Intel leak.
It was a dramatic day for the rest of town of North Dayton in Massachusetts when FBI
authorities arrested 21 year old Jack Texera from his house a member of the US Air Force
he was reading a book on his patio as agents swooped in to nab him for leaking highly classified
documents.
Here's my one question.
Have you seen the documents.
Moving on.
Okay this is our main story for the day and this my friends is an evolving story.
Titled Who is Nima Momeni.
So last Friday one week ago I covered the tragic fatal stabbing of tech executive Bob
Lee in San Francisco California.
It was unclear at the time who had conducted the attack and what what the motive could
have been and authorities seemed suspiciously coy about revealing any details on what leads
they may have been chasing down.
But yesterday an arrest was made.
Police have officially accused Nima Momeni of murdering Bob Lee.
It is particularly notable that the 38 year old Momeni is also a tech entrepreneur which
was sort of what my suspicions were leaning towards.
Whoever this whoever the killer wound up being I thought maybe this would be the realm they
came from.
And according to police the attack was neither a mugging nor a random act of violence.
It only seems right to follow up my previous report in which we dove into who Bob Lee was.
It seems right I do the same now for Momeni.
After all I am very curious as to what led police to identify him as the killer and I
would love to see if the official story stands up to the smell test the smell test scrutiny.
Now keep in mind I'm not the police I don't have access to their materials and I'm not
conducting the investigation so I'm not claiming any special insight and I'm not claiming I
know better than anyone who's actually working on this case.
I just want to be clear.
But again rounding the news as informed non TV watchers how do we process this news because
in the end this that is what this is when when articles are put out we are the target
audience we're the ones who are supposed to be processing it one way or the other.
So let's take control of how we process it.
So what do we know about Nima Momeni.
Well his LinkedIn page was last up was was up last time I checked and I discovered that
while the way back machine does not archive LinkedIn archive dot today does.
So that was a fun little thing to learn.
Now according to Momeni's LinkedIn page he attended the University of California Berkeley.
Usually according to university spokesperson Dan Moguloff there exists no record of his
attendance or graduation from the school.
Okay that's odd.
Keep in mind the same thing happened with Rishi Sunak from Stanford as far as I remember
Stanford.
Anyway he also lists Laney College and Vista College.
Now Laney College is a public community college in Oakland California.
So that that checks out Vista College on the other hand is very interesting having been
founded in 2006 by a former McKinsey and co employee then suddenly going bankrupt and
shutting down in late 2021.
I went down a bit of a side rabbit hole yesterday where I discovered that the debt of all of
these students had been purchased by a group called the debt collective which is funded
by all sorts of fun people.
But it's a group that contests they want to eliminate debt for everybody.
Anyway that's not the scope of our discussion today but I thought this was very interesting.
So presumably though Momeni would have graduated long before this occurred.
So Momeni's career because this is what we did with Bob Lee we went through we saw everything
he did and we found he had a tremendously interesting career with impact on all of our
lives.
But Momeni not not so much.
So we've got from 2005 all the way to August 2013 in this little section.
He worked at Marfic Technologies from 2005 to 2007 as a system slash network engineer.
He then worked at Coast Range Technologies as an IT administrator slash consultant from
2006 to 2012.
He then also worked as a consultant at a few other firms Diablo IT Spock which I believe
is single point of contact.
That was from August 2007 to August 2013.
He subcontracted Bay Area clients from other IT providers and provided full IT support
project management handled all day to day IT operations and activities at the respective
local and or remote client sites.
So he seems fairly proficient at what he does.
All right.
Then on March 17th 2010 Momeni incorporated expand information technology under the corporate
title of expand IT services LLC through his company Momeni claims to have led a group
of local expert enterprise IT professionals dedicated to providing solid reliable and
efficient technology solutions and cost effective support services.
I was able to find this Better Business Bureau profile for the company.
I found it.
I found what appeared to substantially this is you know real company.
They had real clients as far as I can tell.
But that's that's it.
That's basically all this guy's LinkedIn page has to offer except for this little tidbit.
This is a screenshot of about this profile.
You'll see he joined in 2010.
His contact information was updated over one year ago but his profile photo was updated
less than one week ago.
So if the murder took place on April 4th and he was arrested on April 13th yesterday that
means his profile photo was updated in the interim after he allegedly committed the murder
and before he was arrested.
In other words before everybody started seeking out his profile.
Now unfortunately even though I've discovered archive.today does archive LinkedIn pages
I can't find any archives that exist prior to this change.
So I can't see what it used to look like.
Very interesting.
This is where the plot begins to thicken for me.
So as the news broke yesterday of Momeni's arrest eager readers such as myself seeking
to learn more about his business by visiting its website were greeted by this error message.
This site is currently unavailable.
Now rather than having been scrubbed based on the error messages I was getting from the
Wayback Machine plugin that I have on my computer it appears that the website simply experienced
a traffic overload and could not handle the traffic much like what happens as a result
of a directed denial of service attack or DDOS.
But luckily the Wayback Machine was on my side here and I was able to go back to a snapshot
of the website from November 2011 just over a year after his company was founded and I
was able to locate on the about page of this old website this bio for Momeni.
Founder Nina Momeni has been in the IT industry since 1999.
He has extensive experience managing and implementing network systems and infrastructure.
He has developed and implemented systems throughout the world in a variety of industry and possesses
in deep knowledge, oh sorry in depth knowledge of core business processes, software and system
implementations.
Through his tenure with several venture capital startups and IT service companies he has gained
valuable knowledge about predictable, flexible and cost effective IT operations.
Huh, based on this paragraph from 2011 it seems there is a good six years of professional
experience not accounted for on Momeni's LinkedIn profile.
Remember we only have from 2005 onwards.
Now again my partner Sam pointed out well that may include his time in university and
I pointed out well it specifically says extensive experience in the IT industry since 1999 which
to me suggests also when you consider his age 38 that this refers to his initial his
first jobs perhaps.
And also striking about speaking of first jobs is the mention of his tenure with several
venture capital startups which are entirely absent from his page.
There's no mention of venture capital.
Now keep in mind if indeed Momeni has a relationship or a history with venture capital firms well
that would be a very obvious way in which Momeni and Bob Lee would intersect because
Bob Lee was a partner at several venture capital firms.
It's not a given that venture capital and IT combine.
So there's something strange missing here.
But the strangest thing or rather the most interesting thing that caught my eye at the
end here was some of the reporting what his neighbors were saying.
So this is being shown as the building where Momeni had a live work setup and his neighbors
in this building were approached.
They were interviewed by the media following his arrest.
One anonymously alleged that Momeni had come to his door the night of the incident the
night of the murder asking for alcohol.
A second neighbor Chris Donatello expressed shock at the arrest and described Momeni as
a super nice guy.
To Chris it seemed out of nowhere it didn't add up necessarily.
He wasn't expecting that Momeni would be someone who would be accused of such a crime.
Now a third neighbor was a gentleman named Sam Singer who recently opened an office for
his public relations firm in the same building as Momeni's live work space.
Reading the title here Emeryville neighbors of Nima Momeni suspect in Bob Lee murder express
shock after his arrest.
Well known Bay Area public relations veteran Sam Singer never expected he would work next
door to Momeni accused in Lee's killing.
Total shock Singer told CBS News Bay Area.
I'm in the public relations business we don't normally work next to killers.
Singer says he never had a poor encounter with Momeni beyond hearing music a bit too
loudly.
Side note I confirmed that he Momeni moonlights as a DJ and I found his SoundCloud profile.
That'll be in the show notes.
Warm welcoming very nice fellow like any other tech consultant here in the Bay Area lives
in a live workspace Singer said.
He handed us a stack of cards and said if you ever need anything let me know.
But Sam Singer this is not nobody.
It's in fact rather convenient that Sam Singer was present at the scene of this you know
narratively it's a promising follow up to such an upsetting story.
They got the guy.
According to his website Singer associates which literally just opened us a location
in the same building as Momeni.
According to the website Sam Singer is one of the nation's leading communication strategist
even earning titles such as the fixer the top gun for hire and one of the most powerful
people in the San Francisco Bay Area due to his ability to impact the news for his agency's
clients.
The news I quote Mr. Singer is nationally known for handling some of the most significant
public affairs corporate communications and crisis communications campaigns.
Clients include Fortune 500 companies and well regarded corporations including Chevron
San Francisco 49ers Lenar Stanford University Levi Strausen Co.
The Gap Visa International MBIA Ford Motor Co Airbnb Disney Warner Brothers EA Sports
San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Examiner Bay Area Rapid Transit District or BART and
other prominent corporations nonprofits political issues and elected leaders.
To be very specific here.
Singer's associates clients list includes a number of entities directly involved in
the Bob Lee incident.
For example the San Francisco General Hospital the facility where Lee was brought before
being pronounced dead.
We've got the San Francisco Chronicle the largest newspaper in the city and a significant
media outlet covering the story.
And finally of course the San Francisco Examiner another outlet in San Francisco also covering
the story.
So if this man's job if he is one of the nation's top fixers for stories impacting the news
in his own words for his firm's clients and his firm's clients are so directly involved
in this high profile story I'm not drawing conclusions.
But it seems interesting that someone named the fixer just so happens to have just moved
in beside this guy.
Coincidence.
Frankly this story is moving so fast I don't really know what my conclusions are because
a will Edmonds to NASA this guy was allegedly his neighbor.
Yes.
I believe the building he was in let's pull this up again the building he's in.
And by the way there's some Google Street View confusion about where this address actually
was and I'm going to look into this further but this is the building in question apparently
and so as you see it's a it's a corporate looking building.
So Mameni was in a live workspace there so an office where he also worked.
Kind of fun sort of my style doing this from my bedroom.
And in this same building Sam Singer just opened up like something like the fifth or
sixth location for his crisis communications business.
So that's that.
But look the story continues to evolve.
Okay.
Mameni was scheduled for his first court appearance today and I thought it would be wise for me
to go and just double check and see if there are any last minute changes to the story and
indeed tech exec appears in court charged with knifing to death cash app founder Bob
Lee as his sister who introduced the pair shows up in support with her famous plastic
surgeon husband except that's not even the right headline because it's been postponed.
It was postponed.
There was no hearing today as far as I know.
But who is this famous plastic plastic surgeon husband.
He was joint glamorous sister Kazar who had so there's more to look into is what I'm saying.
This story broke yesterday.
So I'm afraid I can't leave you with much of a conclusion other than to say isn't it
interesting that there are these instead of one singular narrative throughout like we
have with Bob Lee which was fairly easy to follow.
Why is it that there's these these strange coincidences or strange things that aren't
available for us to go and check and verify.
Like I said not drawing conclusions but I hope this has been a good exercise for all
of us in examining sources in looking at where some of the people impacting the news may
be and if indeed in all of these stories the question is do we see the impact of a fixer.
Do we see someone in the Tiffany Dover story coming in to round out the story there.
Do we have someone in the Arizona election story coming in to make sure the story goes
the way they need.
Do we have something like that in this very very strange Pentagon leak story.
And do we have something like that here with Nina Mameni.
I'll leave it to you guys to decide.
In the meantime thank you so much for watching.
As I've said the show notes will be posted as I finish them up after within a couple
of hours on to roundingtheearth.locals.com.
There should be even more fun links and resources as I seek to round out my arguments and become
a member become a paid supporter if you want to join in on our weekly supporters only live
streams and what you can do of course is still go to the OG roundingtheearth.substack.com
where Matthew continues to publish excellent commentary and discussions around many aspects
of this very interesting time period we're living in.
You can find me at LiamSturgis.com and if you want find me on Clubhouse because I'm
going to be joining in a music production room with my friend Footsch and if you're
not familiar with Clubhouse it's an app that believe it or not Bob Lee invested in.
So go find that and come see in just over two hours come find me on there and in the
meantime thank you all so much for watching.
I have been Liam Sturgis you have been you and I will see you on Monday or Tuesday next
week.
Have an excellent weekend.